


endless, nameless

by robpatFF



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 07:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1501391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robpatFF/pseuds/robpatFF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gave him a name.</p><p>He doesn't know what that means yet.</p><p>"I am James Buchanan Barnes," he whispers to the stars, and they stay silent as if that is who they've always known him to be. As if that has always been true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	endless, nameless

**Author's Note:**

> Post-CATWS, so spoilers. I just have a lot of feelings, etc, so. Maybe now I can go for longer than an hour without tweeting "BUT BUCKY BARNES THOUGH" and annoying everyone on my timeline. 
> 
> Looked over by thine own eyes. I don't own anything but my emotions and my mistakes. Everything else belongs to Marvel.

The museum gives him a name. 

-

The place gives him a name and a face, really. He can’t remember the last time he looked in the mirror and saw someone look back. He can’t remember the last time he looked into a mirror, a reflective surface, the glint of a screen, _anywhere_ , and said _there I am_. Probably because he doesn’t know who he is.

That’s a lie though. The exhibit tells him he is James Buchanan Barnes. His hair is cropped close, but it hangs in his face a little. He probably spent a lot of time pushing it back out of his eyes. He was born in 1917. His best friend was Steve Rogers (-- _you’re my friend_ , he hears, and squeezes his eyes shut until it goes away, peters out into nothing but white noise), and he sacrificed his life for the good of his country.

The museum gives him that. Paragraphs of a life, summed up and shoved together and tidy.

The museum gives him a name and a face and a life.

He is James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes.

-

He doesn’t know what that means.

-

New York is busy. Busier than before, obviously, and Bucky can still hear the jazz from behind the walls, the thumps of fists going in the alleyways, the beggars on the street asking for money and food and scraps he doesn’t have.

Now though. New York is a world of its own.

His boots click against the sidewalk. It’s purposeful, thought out. Every step with just the right amount of weight so he knows other people can hear it. It would be easy to be silent, to blend into the shadows, to blink and just--disappear. It would be so easy, and there’s a voice in his head that tells him to give up. To go silent. To become a ghost again and leave not even a trace for anyone to find.

He walks through the busy streets loud enough that he can hear his footsteps over the noise.

-

There’s this diner. There used to be something else there, way back when, the shape of it just on the fringe of his memory. He squints, as if that will trigger something, something _whole_. Which doesn’t make sense. He is made up of broken things now. Broken limbs and broken spirit and broken orders. He is an experiment gone right, then wrong. Maybe wrong from the start.

It’s hard to say.

He is made up of an unfinished mission. Of _confirmed death in ten hours_ to _I knew him, I knew him_ , and flashes of a life long forgotten playing out on a loop until his head pounded and he wanted to fight, to scream, to hurt until it all stopped. Until he almost longed for the the sharp, electric buzz of the machine that could wipe him clean and start over. Until it did, and he was--not Bucky Barnes again. Until he was a tool. A weapon. A thing that could kill with no remorse, no question.

There’s this diner.

The seats are soft and worn in--red leather, and it’s like a throwback to his time. The time he remembers sometimes, when the feeling is right and the memory doesn’t fade away to smoke before he’s grasped it. This diner reminds him of weekends with Steve, of milkshakes and fries and the inevitable fight. Of picking Steve up and brushing him off and making sure they both came home in one piece.

Bucky remembers all that. It burns warm in his chest, the feeling of it. 

He thought he forgot how to feel.

He orders a milkshake, chocolate, because that’s what he used to get, he thinks. It tastes stale in his mouth, bitter over his tongue. It doesn’t taste _right_ , and who is he if he can’t even get this? He grips the glass tight and blinks through the freezing cold condensation that bleeds into his palms. He breathes 

_in_

_out_

and feels anger like a vise, gripping tight to his lungs and forcing out all the air in his chest.

“Hey,” he hears, and it’s faint over the rush of noise in his ears, the constant buzzing in his head. _Wipe him_. “Hey,” Steve says again, and his hand hovers just shy of Bucky’s shoulder, fingers curling toward him like a magnet. 

Bucky relaxes, an inch, then more. Until the glass settles on the table and Steve is sitting on the other side of the booth and Bucky flicks his eyes around to make sure he hasn’t hurt anybody. 

He hasn’t.

He hasn’t.

(--the mantra sticks in his head, and he stares down at his metal arm and knows that he _has_ before. That this mantra is a lie, but a nice one. That truth is a matter of circumstance, and it’s the truth here, in this moment.)

Steve raises his eyebrows. His hand moves slow when he reaches out for the glass, pulls it on his side of the table. “Milkshakes that bad here?”

Bucky breathes out. And in. Out again to make sure he can. “I used to order chocolate, didn’t I.”

Steve shrugs. He is so much the same and different, like two bodies overlaid on one another. His hair is different, the set of his shoulders, the way he holds himself. But the wry tone is the same, the matter of fact way he says, “People change,” as if that’s the fundamental goddamn truth of it all. 

Maybe it is.

Maybe people do.

Steve orders a vanilla shake. Bucky blinks when it’s set on the table, feels-- _something_ in his chest like shame or anger or frustration. Like all three.

He stares into the glass once it’s pushed over to him. Wonders how he can kill one day (--hear the screams and the choked sound of blood and the pleading, the crying, the haunting silence of death) and contemplate the meaning of life over a maraschino cherry the next. 

“Just drink it, Buck,” he hears.

He drinks it. 

Better than the chocolate.

-

The days are worse than the nights, honestly. The nights go by quick. Can be counted in the number of stars or the stutter of the streetlights or the dim, tinted orange of the sun signalling its end.

The nights are good. He doesn’t sleep much, can’t dream without waking up dripping with sweat, phantom screams still ringing in his ears, the freezing burn of ice spreading over his skin before sharpening into the rapid pulse of electricity. 

The nights are good because he can pad out to the balcony. He gives in to the silence that comes second nature to him. Gives into the way his body melts into the shadows on the way out. The moon lights him up once he’s back outside, leaves him vulnerable and visible, and he whispers _I am James Buchanan Barnes_ and hopes the stars give him something more back. 

They don’t usually, just glint and shine steadily, the only constant Bucky’s had.

But that’s not true. Steve’s been here, anchored to Bucky’s subconscious like a star ready to burst into a supernova and undo seventy years of missions and death and a metal arm that can squeeze the life out of a person. That squeezed the life out of Bucky-- _The Winter Soldier_.

He shuts his eyes and breathes out. He’s too far gone for that North Star bullshit. Steve isn’t his North Star or his home or his savior or anything like that.

Steve is a man on a bridge who said a name that burrowed under the Winter Soldier’s skin. Found a way under the metal and etched its way in so all he could say was (-- _I knew him_ and it sounds wrong to his ears, the vulnerability in his voice, the catch in his throat. The sting of the slap against his face feels more familiar, the burning sensation of an angry palm, a violent fist. _But I knew him_ until he can’t say anything, can only scream and dig his nails into his palms until there is just the mission and death and blankness)

“I knew him.”

Steve gave him a name.

He doesn't know what that means yet.

"I am James Buchanan Barnes," he whispers to the stars, and they stay silent as if that is who they've always known him to be. As if that has always been true.

-

Days are hard.

The sun hurts his eyes, makes him wish for the mask again, the heavy goggles and weighted material clinging to his face. The sun doesn’t let him hide, makes his long, black coat out of place and his gloves overheating.

He stays inside most days. Makes a lot of noise when he walks and leaves his clothes strewn on the floor and the bed, and he takes up space. Leaves traces that say _I was here, I was here, I am here,_ so that he knows. So that he can follow his trail back if he forgets. 

Someone makes breakfast.

Sometimes it’s Steve, usually it’s Sam, music playing out of his-- _electronic thing_ , and he hums under his breath while he cooks. He always opens up all the windows in Steve’s apartment, lets the breeze come in and the music trickle out, and the place smells like bacon and eggs and something sweet like syrup. 

Sam doesn’t jump when Bucky hovers silently at the entryway to the kitchen. He raises his eyebrows, unimpressed and underwhelmed, before he turns back to the stove. Bucky could probably hear his voice over the music, but he turns it down anyway, just a little, before he talks.

“You in or out, Barnes?” Sam says. He gives a quick glance over his shoulder before he turns back to cut up onions and tomatoes and sausage. “Mama always said stay out the kitchen if you can’t handle the heat, man.”

Bucky tightens his grip around the doorframe. His arm feels heavy, like the metal would drag him down if he let it. Sam turns his music back up, and the bass thumps so loud it vibrates under Bucky’s skin, drowns out the white noise in his head, the constant buzz of electricity that lingers behind his eyes, against his skull. 

He takes one step. Then another. Close enough that he can feel the heat of the stove, see the sweat that grazes Sam’s hairline, squint at the glare of the screen where the music comes from. Close enough that he could kill Sam, if he wanted. Reach out before he had a second to react. Could snuff out the life that pumps through his veins, could squeeze around his neck until he slumped over. Could leave him here for Steve to find. Another trace, maybe. _I was here._

“You gonna put these onions in the pan or make me do all the work again?” Sam asks, and his voice cuts through, sharp as a knife. “I didn’t do two tours just to come home and cook for you.”

Bucky’s mouth twitches. 

“What--” and he stops, clears his throat and the gravel that feels stuck in there. “What do you want me to do?”

“Ever make an omelette?”

“Do you think I’ve made an omelette?”

“Okay, old man,” Sam says. “I guess omelettes are a product of the future. Grab me that bowl of tomatoes. Will that metal melt over high heat?”

Bucky could kill him.

“And you still haven’t let the onions brown, Barnes.”

Bucky lets the onions brown. 

-

Sometimes he misses it. The fluid way his body moves when he’s fighting, the way his limbs ache, strain, push him harder. He misses the feeling of his blood pumping strong and steady through his veins, the rapid thump of his heart in his chest.

He misses blood under his nails, the sting of scrapes over his knuckles. Crushing the metal against flesh.

He misses it sometimes.

Steve fights defensively. He lets Bucky punch forward, arms swinging, legs kicking out. Steve lets Bucky back him up against walls, lets Bucky push him backward and down and away. He fights like he’ll just _take_ it, whatever Bucky gives him. He doesn’t push forward, push back. He blocks with his fists, the bulge of his arms, but mostly the shield. Bucky has come to hate the clang of his metal arm against the vibranium. 

Sam tries. He’s not a super soldier, not a super anything, but he’s fast. He ducks Bucky’s fists, tries to get his own jabs in and finds his windpipe nearly crushed under silver. He waits Bucky out, then he fights dirty, tries to catch him off guard. Sam fights like he wants to prove that he can, that Bucky can. That they can fight and both walk out of here afterwards, sweaty and heaving and--not friends. Something, though.

Sam tries.

The Widow-- _Natasha_ \--Natasha fights back. She gives as good as she gets and she _hurts_ , her legs and her arms and how she twists around him, makes him push. There’s a cut on her face, her hair swinging in her eyes, and she stares him down and Bucky _fights_. He pushes and punches and flips until there’s nothing but the scrape of metal, the heavy breathing, nothing but flesh and blood and life.

He’s alive.

Natasha pins him a few times. Gets her thighs around his neck and squeezes until he taps out, breath rattling in the cage of his lungs. 

“You give?” She asks, voice raspy but even. Strong. 

“I give,” he says. 

She lets him go.

-

“Get a haircut,” Natasha says. She’s rolling up her mat, hair up now. Out of her face. She looks at him with clear eyes, and she could kill him. He could kill her. 

“So I can look like I used to?” 

She levels her stare at him, but Bucky doesn’t give this time, doesn’t fold. “So you can look like who you are now, James.”

He breathes out. Folds up his own mat and revels in the ache in his bones, the strain of his muscles under his clothes. “You can call me Bucky, you know.”

She starts toward the door. “Do I seem like the person to call anyone Bucky?” she says over her shoulder. “Get a haircut, James.”

Maybe he will.

-

The dinners are haphazard and messy and too quiet, most times.

They happen to always fall on Sundays, or maybe Steve plans them that way, thinks Bucky will respond well to tradition. He doesn’t care either way, as long as he eats, but he doesn’t say anything. Just watches the clock and pads into the kitchen at seven on the dot.

“Potatoes,” Sam says when he finally realizes Bucky is standing behind him, silent and waiting and hesitant. “I know y’all peeled potatoes back in the day, so don’t give me that.”

Steve’s on salad duty, and he and Bucky stand side by side, their own respective jobs in front of them. Steve dices up tomatoes like he’s diffusing a bomb, careful and slow and precise. Bucky’s potatoes are peeled clumsily and there’s still skin on some of them when he hands the bowl back to Sam.

“I’ll give it a B,” Sam tells him. “Aim high, Barnes. One day you’ll be as good as me in this kitchen.”

“Dreams,” Bucky says, and it’s too dry, too sharp, and he still hasn’t got quite the handle on how to joke, how to make people _laugh_ , but. 

The corner of Sam’s mouth turns up before he turns away to smother the potatoes in cheese. Steve huffs next to him, this puff of something that could be a laugh if Bucky heard it again. He elbows Bucky’s side, gentle, he’s always so fucking gentle, says, “Good one,” and Bucky-- _feels_. Alive. Warm. Good.

Good.

-

The three of them cram around Steve’s little table. Sometimes their knees brush together, sometimes Sam leaves the both of them and takes his food in front of the television. Sometimes Steve is distracted, one hand around his fork and the other around his charcoals, head buried in his sketchbook.

Sometimes Bucky peels the potatoes right. Sometimes he doesn’t come out at all, and he hears the scrape of a plate being set in front of the door, the crinkle crush of aluminum foil being wrapped over the top. Sometimes none of them have anything to say, so they just eat, but Steve washes the dishes after, and Bucky dries, and Sam will bring dessert (-- _what do you mean you don’t like apple pie_ ). 

Sometimes Natasha comes. She’s always late, always doesn’t care about that fact. She materializes in the kitchen with her sleeves pushed back and a bottle under her arm. Only Sam can get drunk, but Steve will drink to be polite and Natasha will drink because she appreciates good wine, and Bucky will drink because the wine is tart on his tongue. Sour almost. Because it makes him scrunch his face up, and they laugh. 

Steve says, “Pass the garlic bread, will ya, Bucky?”

Natasha stares at him over dessert once, when he’s got a mouth full of cobbler and his cheeks are bursting. Blinks and says, “Nice haircut, James,” and he swallows hard. 

Sam pushes a bowl of blueberries into his chest hours after dinner once. “Muffins,” he says. “Drop them in the batter, Barnes. Not too many. Don’t mess it up.”

He doesn’t.

-

He has a name.

He is James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes.

The stars stay silent because this is who they’ve always known him to be. This has always been true.

-


End file.
